Digital lighting technologies, i.e. illumination based on semiconductor solid-state light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications. Some of the fixtures embodying these sources feature a lighting module, including one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g. red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects.
In view of the above advantages, LEDs have been increasingly used in the lighting industry to retrofit conventional lighting applications. However, LED lighting modules and systems, as typically implemented in these conventional lighting applications, often include fixed fixture design with LED panels, a specific electronic driver, wiring and other components for specific lumens, light patterns, etc. The advantages of LED lighting thus have not been fully realized. For example, by utilizing the point-like characteristics of LEDs, the necessary lumen output for desired light patterns may be reduced, while at the same time providing varied light distribution, color/color temperature, and brightness. In the meantime, with the development of integrated circuit technology, power-system-on-chip (PSoC) technology is rapidly developing.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide modular lighting systems architecture that fully utilize the advantages of LEDs as point sources in combination with integrated electronic drivers, while addressing shortcomings of known approaches.